The IEEE Medical Imaging Conference (MIC) is the leading international scientific meeting bringing together a broad community interested in the physics, engineering and mathematical aspects of medical imaging, with special emphasis on nuclear medicine (SPECT and PET) and multi-modal systems. The MIC runs in conjunction with the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium (NSS) and the Workshop on Room Temperature Semiconductor X-ray and Gamma-ray Detectors (RTSD). The purpose of the MIC is to disseminate and foster new research in physics and bio-engineering methods in medical imaging. While the traditional topics of primary interest are related to nuclear medicine techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), increasing space will be also given to recently evolving imaging modalities such as X- ray, CT, optical, MR, with special emphasis on their multi-modal combination with nuclear medical imaging. The conference provides a well-established forum of scientific exchange and dialogue between researchers in academia, industry, and government as well as education of the public, with special emphasis on young generations. This is reflected by the large spectrum of educational refresher sessions and short courses. One of the major objectives of the conference is the education of young investigators, and therefore this NIH R13 proposal seeks $10,000 in funding to provide 20 trainee grants of $500 each to partially cover costs of MIC conference registration and short course fees for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows based at US institutions. We anticipate that the main impact of this grant program will be to increase attendance of students and postdocs at the 2014 meeting, as well as to support their participation in educational activities. It is important to bring young generations, especially women, minorities, and those with disabilities, into the medical imaging field, where they could become main actors in the coming years. They will listen to plenary and oral presentations given by many of the world leaders in the nuclear medical imaging instrumentation, image processing, and quantitative analysis fields. Moreover, they will be given the unique opportunity of direct personal interaction through the short courses and dedicated poster presentations. In turn their work will be exposed to the other participants for critical evaluation, constructive suggestions and dissemination. Furthermore, many of these trainees will likely continue in this field, thereby contributing to advancing technology with high societal relevance as being increasingly used in the clinical management of disease and therapeutic interventions.